Kalopsia
by ephemeral.wishes
Summary: Kalopsia (n.) — the delusion that something is more beautiful than it really is. A wish upon three of Ritsuka Fujimaru's twenty-seven Grails, acquired within the Singularities she's repaired, has certain…consequences. Fighting for her life as reality cracks and fate is forced to twist and turn, the young Master is forced into one of the most turbulent periods of her life.
1. Chapter 0 : BEGINNING

_A Fate/Grand Order Fan Fiction_

 **NOTE: Spoilers for Fate/Grand Order's story mode up until Lostbelt 1.**

CHAPTER=ZERO

 _wish upon a grail_

It had been a long journey.

Fuyuki, Orleans, Rome, Okeanos, London, America, Camelot, Babylonia…and then the Time Temple.

After that, the Crypters, and the Lostbelts. The orange-haired girl had already managed to eliminate the first one — the Permafrost Empire that belonged to the Caster known as Anastasia, servant to the Crypter Kadoc Zemlupus. Preparations were currently in the midst for travelling to the next Lostbelt.

Mash had urged her to retire early, citing strenuous expectations in the next Lostbelt ("Senpai, please go to sleep soon…Anastasia's empire took a lot out of us, and we can expect the next one to be harder…"), but she had only been able to toss and turn. Fixing human history was tiring and heavy work, truly…but the burden she carried after each and every Singularity weighed for more on her conscience. The lives she had saved — and those she could not.

Those who had sacrificed themselves to weaken their foes — for her. Who had placed their faith and trust in the girl as they died.

Those who had been forced to stay behind and buy her time so she could run, because she'd been too weak to fight for herself.

She buried her head in her hands. Her eyes stung, as they had numerous times before — but her resolve did not falter. It could not falter. Too many had given up priceless things to keep her and Mash alive.

Groaning, the young Master stood up at last, bleary-eyed and all but stumbling in her gait as she traversed the room to reach her bathroom. One last break before setting out onto the second Lostbelt technology had picked up.

"Ack !"

Something on the floor caught her foot, and she fell forwards amidst the sound of rough metallic clanking. The magus wobbled to her feet, muttering as she disentangled her leg from the black fabric straps that had been caught in it.

"Huh ? These are…"

Metal cups. Golden ones, in the shapes of chalices. The twenty-over Holy Grails Fujimaru had been dispatched all over time and space to recover.

 _Whoever obtains a Holy Grail, holds an omnipotent wish-granting machine in their hands. Make a wish, and it will grant it — it is that simple, miss Fujimaru._

Words whispered by a voice she no longer could place a face to.

Making a wish…

What did she wish for ?

"Da Vinci…Roman…Director —"

Three of the grails were shakily taken from her bag and arranged together in a straight line before her, slowly at first and then with increasing speed as the gears of her mind began to whir once more. She could do it. She could save them. She could save them…

"By the Holy Grail, let it be so !"

Her heart was set firmly. In the depths of the Shadow Border, any awake-and-about Servants might've spotted a strange golden glow that was beginning to intensify. In contrast, Mash slept soundly, unaware of her senpai's actions above her room.

Their faces flickered through her mind. Reality and the boundaries between existence and nonexistence, life and death twisted, warped and changed as the power of the Holy Grail — three of them, in fact — forced them to. It was far too late to halt her actions, however.

"I wish…I wish that Director Olga Marie Animusphere…Da Vinci-chan in her original body…and Dr. Romani Archaman…would come back !"


	2. Chapter 0: AFTERMATH

"Mash. Mash. Wake up."

…

"Kyrielight, wake up. There's important news."

 _Huh_? The drowsy Demi-Servant wondered, twisting away from the hand on her shoulder that was shaking her body repeatedly. At first, some part of her protested, until remembrance for the purpose of her continued existence — remembrance of her resolve — jolted her into battle-ready mode in but an instant.

"Is it time for another Lostbelt ? !"

Sleepiness had long claimed the girl, but she rubbed its lingering traces from her eyes with fierce movements of her hand. The obscurance of her vision owing to such, however, would have resulted in her not having seen just who had spoken to her — and tiredness as well as general denial would not allow her to believe it from sound either.

However, when their features showed themselves before her, Mash Kyrielight could not say otherwise — she did not say _anything_ , as a matter of fact, owing to the surprise having robbed her of her words.

"…Doctor ?! Director ?!"

—

"Finally, the omnipotent genius, Da Vinci-chan herself, is back ~ though, _just what_ has that halfwit Holmes done to my Shadow Border ?!"

There was an incredibly distinct stink of…illegal substances to put it lightly. Now, the Caster could really care less about people who abused such things, but for him to use them so wantonly in _her_ Shadow Border and potentially contaminate the delicate tools — such was something that deserved nothing less than punishment.

"Contemptible…"

Seething with anger and disgust, Da Vinci rushed to a portion of the Border, clicking dials and configuring substances, wincing whenever she'd be forced to clean a piece of weed or particle of cocaine off the delicate materials.

"Honestly, for a detective, he really should realise such things are bad…and it's never even been proven they improve mental faculties ! Huh, what's that—?"

Red text upon a screen, accompanied by a symphony of incessant bleeping, labelled with three words.

Sɪɴɢᴜʟᴀʀɪᴛʏ Cᴀʟᴄᴜʟᴀᴛɪᴏɴ Sʏsᴛᴇᴍ

Her actions caused by curiosity, the intellectual edged her way across, moving to the light. The screen showed coordinates, numbers, letters…all of them nonsensical to someone who was unaware of their great mission.

However, Da Vinci's genius was second to none. She understood each and every thing perfectly, but at that moment, the woman wished she hadn't. What lay upon the screen spoke tragedy — not just for her, but for the Master who'd brought her back.

"Hello ? Shadow Border ? I knew I installed an AI here…call Fujimaru and co. down to this lab, okay ?"

—

It had worked.

Really, Ritsuka shouldn't have been so skeptic — the Holy Grails were after all revered as omnipotent wish-granters.

But still, to have actually done this — !

She paced around her room, ecstatic with joy. After the miracle that had transpired, the girl had retreated within to bask in the sheer elation that consumed her every fibre — and the three whom she'd brought back had dispersed to reveal to the others of the circumstances behind their recreation.

Why hadn't she thought to do it before ?

A twinge of guilt — she'd only focused on powering her Servants up through expending these priceless resources. How foolish of her.

"Attention, Fujimaru Ritsuka and company. Report to the monitoring room at level 1 immediately. Report to the monitoring room at level 1 immediately. Code Red."

The orange-haired magus blinked at the sudden snap from her joy, eyes showing the slightest hint of confusion.

"…What's happened now ?"


	3. Chapter 1: BROKEN GRAIL WAR PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1: BROKEN GRAIL WAR : PROLOGUE

* * *

"How could this happen, Da Vinci ?"

If there was one thing Olga Marie Animusphere prided herself on, it was the immense propensity she held for learning, understanding, and keeping up to date on whatever situation she or the Chaldean team had found herself in.

She had managed to get a basic grasp of the group's new objective during her short time spent with Fujimaru — yet it seemed such information was about to be upended on its head. Da Vinci's head shook as she spoke with solemnity, the Heroic Spirit's bottom lip protuding slightly and her lips turned downwards.

"It shames I, the omnipotent genius, to say this, but…I don't know. What I _am_ aware of, however, is that unknown effects have resulted in the forceful rewriting of the Lostbelts, replacing them with something much like a fusion between them and Singularities — at least, that is what I can gather from cross-referencing the data Ritsuka-chan's already collected."

The female continued to speak, reciting facts newly gleaned from the

The air was heavy with contemplation, but surprisingly (for the recently revived), the Shielder was the first to speak.

"If that's what's happening…I think Senpai and I can handle this. We just need to go there and make sure whatever anomaly's in it stops, right ?"

The former Grand Caster looked to the purple-haired girl with obvious worry in his tone. One didn't require precognition or telepathy to know what Romani was thinking.

"It would be risky, Mash. We can't afford to lose you or Ritsuka if this new…whatever it is turns unstable or collapses in on itself !"

"…No. Mash is right."

Chaldea's forty-eighth Master candidate met the eyes of each of the four in turn, her resolve visible in her orange orbs.

"I'll go. Do we…do we have the co-ordinates on the next one ?"

Da Vinci's nod was immediate.

"We've pinpointed the nearest one to here, and I can prepare the shifting in thirty minutes at most — though I can't say I'm not surprised. I thought we were long done with that place."

Her fingers tapped against the Shadow Border's complex mechanisms. Hexagonal pixels spread across the screen, giving forth the sigil of Chaldea before underlining it with a simple sentence.

* * *

𝔼ℕ𝕋𝔸ℕ𝔾𝕃𝔼𝔻 ℂ𝕀𝕋𝕐 𝕆𝔽 𝔽𝕀ℝ𝔼 : 𝔽𝕌𝕐𝕌𝕂𝕀

* * *

"Let silver and steel be the essence.  
Let stone and the archduke of contracts be the foundation  
Let ⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕⁕ be the colour I pay tribute to  
Let rise a wall against the wind that shall fall  
Let the four cardinal gates close.  
Let the three-forked road from the crown reaching unto the Kingdom rotate."

 _Six sigils set themselves alight, mana flowing through a conduit provided by sanguine that had been poured with utmost care into mystic sigils carved into the ground. Six figures, bodies outlined by the glow of the circle and shadowed by the darkness of either the sable night or the private chambers where they were calling forth the spirits of the past to do battle, raised their hands as mana poured forth from them to assist in the formation of the Servant's physical body._

"I hereby declare.  
Your body shall serve under me.  
My fate shall be your sword.  
Submit to the beckoning of the Holy Grail  
If you will submit to this will and this reason…Then answer!

An oath shall be sworn here!  
I shall attain all virtues of all of Heaven.  
I shall have dominion over all evils of all of Hell!"

 _One deviated from the process then, lengthening the chant by a mere three lines — yet those three lines caused alterations irreversible to a Saint Graph and the consequential summoning._

 **Yet you shall serve with your eyes clouded by chaos.**

 **For you would be one caged in madness.**

 **But I shall wield your chains.**

 _The beginning of a Grail War, twisted and bastardised by the higher powers that commanded fate. A truly disgusting dislocation, where not even all seven Classes were summoned and countless anomalies pervaded the process — all in all, something that would've made regular magi recoil in complete horror, for Heaven's Feel was surely unachievable now. But its participants did not care, could not care — even a warped chance was still a chance._

"From the Seventh Heaven, attended to by three greet words of power,  
Come forth from the ring of restraints,  
Protector of the Holy Balance!"

 _At once, six new entities manifested in sparkles of golden prana. A sentence fell from their lips as one, though some worded it in stranger or cruder ways._

❝ Aяє уσυ му Mαѕтєя ? ❞

* * *

"Fuyuki City again, huh ?"

"Indeed. Unfortunately, pre-emptive scans of the newly formed area — we've tentatively called them Deadspaces, if you'll pardon the weird name — suggest neither Caster nor Zhuge Liang will be around to help us, so you'll have to handle yourself, Ritsuka. Furthermore, while you've been tossed into a Grail War, at least that"

"Don't worry, Da Vinci-chan. Mash and I can do this."

"I hope so. Best of luck. Initiating Paper Moon…now."

Chaldea's Ace relaxed her tensed muscles as azure light engulfed her and her Servant companion, bringing them for a third time into the land where flame cloaked the idyllic-seeming area, and into the thick of yet another perilous situation.

…Why ?

The question stuck with her for the seconds it took to arrive within Fuyuki.

At night, the city's streets appeared desolate. The occasional insect might cut through the darkness in a flurry of fluttering wings, or the sound of a bird might eliminate the silence for brief moments, but in the area devoid of people and lit merely by random streetlamps or the orange glow from a lit window, Ritsuka felt chills clamber up her spine.

* * *

 _"_ _You are of which Class ?"_

 _"_ _I'm_ ** _Rider_** _! Ufufu, you're not a strong man, but you'll do !"_

 _"_ _If strong men is what you desire, there shall be aplenty waiting for you. You only have to follow my lead…so I can claim the wish I seek."_

 _"_ _Ufufu ! That's wonderful. Don't worry ~ they'll be mine, whether they like it or not."_

 _"_ _Good to hear, I suppose…enjoy yourself to the fullest,_ ** _Queen Medb_** _."_

* * *

 _"_ _I've got to say, this is the first time someone's called me forth in a state like this — some say Lancer is my best class, you know."_

 _"_ _I couldn't care less about those people. You will do well enough to assist me in my plans for this War — or whatever mockery of it still remains. Tsk, annoying…"_

 _"_ _Hmph ! You underestimate the strength of this_ ** _Berserker_** _. Though I'm but a measly Ulster warrior…upon my summoning, this war became merely a massacre."_

 _"_ _I'm pleased to hear that…_ ** _Cú Chulainn_** _._ "

* * *

 _"_ _I am the man who rose to victory over countless others, and the glorious captain of the Fianna Knights !_ ** _Lancer_** _has answered your call, Master. I'm counting on you."_

 _"_ _Perhaps something good…yes, I will surely be able to restore glory to the name that rightfully should be held above all others. Come, we must discuss plans for this war…_ ** _Fionn mac Cumhaill_**. _"_

* * *

"Oi, Master ! Glad you've called me in a proper class this time."

The jovial voice would do enough to shock Ritsuka during her temporary state of alertness as she scanned the empty lanes around her, trying to determine where she should first approach. Wheeling around, the magus' eyes met crimson orbs and soon filled with relief at meeing a familiar face for once. This version held not a plain brown staff but rather a red spear that glew with energy — the words the Caster had spoken in Fuyuki what seemed like months ago echoed in Fujimaru's mind.

"Lancer !"


End file.
